Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian yogi, maharishi, and Indian nationalist.[2] He also edited the newspaper Bande Mataram.[3]

Aurobindo studied for the Indian Civil Service at King's College, in Cambridge, England. After returning to India, he took up various civil service works under the Maharaja of the princely state of Baroda. He became increasingly involved in nationalist politics in the Indian National Congress and the nascent revolutionary movement in Bengal with the Anushilan Samiti. He was arrested in the aftermath of a number of bombings linked to his organization in a public trial where he faced charges of treason for Alipore Conspiracy and then released, after which he moved to Pondicherry and developed a spiritual practice he called Integral Yoga.

In 1926, he and Mirra Alfassa founded Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

He wrote The Life Divine, which deals with the philosophical aspect of Integral Yoga[4] and Synthesis of Yoga, which deals with the principles and methods of Integral Yoga;[5]

Conversion from politics to spirituality

In July 1905, then Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, partitioned Bengal. This sparked an outburst of public anger against the British, leading to civil unrest and a nationalist campaign by groups of revolutionaries that included Aurobindo. In 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki attempted to kill Magistrate Kingsford, a judge known for handing down particularly severe sentences against nationalists. However, the bomb thrown at his horse carriage missed its target and instead landed in another carriage and killed two British women, the wife and daughter of barrister Pringle Kennedy. Aurobindo was also arrested on charges of planning and overseeing the attack and imprisoned in solitary confinement in Alipore Jail. The trial of the Alipore Bomb Case lasted for a year, but eventually, he was acquitted on 6 May 1909. His defense counsel was Chittaranjan Das.[42]

During this period in the Jail, his view of life was radically changed due to spiritual experiences and realizations. Consequently, his aim went far beyond the service and liberation of the country.[43]

Aurobindo said he was "visited" by Vivekananda in the Alipore Jail: "It is a fact that I was hearing constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation and felt his presence."[44]

In his autobiographical notes, Aurobindo said he felt a vast calm when returning to India. He could not explain this and continued to have various such experiences occasionally. He knew nothing of yoga at that time and started his practice of it without a teacher, except for some rules that he learned from Mr. Devadhar, a friend who was a disciple of Swami Brahmananda of Ganga Math, Chandod.[45][46] In 1907, Barin introduced Aurobindo to Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, a Maharashtrian yogi. Aurobindo was influenced by guidance from the yogi, who instructed Aurobindo to depend on an inner guide, and any external guru or guidance would not be required.[47]

In 1910, Aurobindo withdrew himself from all political activities and went into hiding at Chandannagar in the house of Motilal Roy while the British colonial government was attempting to prosecute him for sedition based on a signed article titled "To My Countrymen", published in Karmayogin. As Aurobindo disappeared from view, the warrant was held back, and the prosecution postponed. Aurobindo maneuvered the police into open action, and a warrant was issued on 4 April 1910, but the warrant could not be executed because, on that date, he had reached Pondicherry, then a French colony.[48] The warrant against Aurobindo was withdrawn.

Philosophy

Sri Aurobindo's concept of the Integral Yoga system is described in his books, The Synthesis of Yoga and The Life Divine.[63] The Life Divine is a compilation of essays published serially in Arya.

Sri Aurobindo argues that divine Brahman manifests as empirical reality through līlā, or divine play. Instead of positing that the world we experience is an illusion (māyā), Aurobindo argues that the world can evolve and become a new world with new species, far above the human species just as human species have evolved after the animal species. As such, he argued that the end goal of spiritual practice could not merely be a liberation from the world into Samadhi but would also be that of descent of the Divine into the world in order to transform it into a Divine existence. Thus, this constituted the purpose of Integral Yoga.[64] Regarding the involution of consciousness in matter, he wrote that: "This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance."[65]

Sri Aurobindo believed that Darwinism merely describes a phenomenon of the evolution of matter into life, but does not explain the reason behind it, while he finds life to be already present in matter, because all of existence is a manifestation of Brahman. He argues that nature (which he interpreted as divine) has evolved life out of matter and the mind out of life. All of existence, he argues, is attempting to manifest to the level of the supermind – that evolution had a purpose.[66] He stated that he found the task of understanding the nature of reality arduous and difficult to justify by immediate tangible results.[67]

Supermind (integral yoga)

At the centre of Sri Aurobindo's metaphysical system is the supermind, an intermediary power between the unmanifested Brahman and the manifested world.[68] Sri Aurobindo claims that the supermind is not completely alien to us and can be realized within ourselves as it is always present within mind since the latter is in reality identical with the former and contains it as a potentiality within itself.[69] Sri Aurobindo does not portray supermind as an original invention of his own but believes it can be found in the Vedas and that the Vedic Gods represent powers of the supermind.[70] In The Integral Yoga he declares that "By the supermind is meant the full Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Nature in which there can be no place for the principle of division and ignorance; it is always a full light and knowledge superior to all mental substance or mental movement."[71] Supermind is a bridge between Sachchidananda and the lower manifestation and it is only through the supramental that mind, life and body can be spiritually transformed as opposed to through Sachchidananda[72] The descent of supermind will mean the creation of a supramental race[73]

The Supramental Descent

On 29 February 1956, Sri Aurobindo's co-worker Mirra Alfassa (The Mother), announced,

"The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognize it."[2]

Affinity with Western philosophy

issue of external influences and written that Sri Aurobindo does not mention names, but "as one reads his books one cannot fail to notice how thorough is his grasp of the great Western philosophers of the present age..." Although he is Indian one should not "underrate the influence of Western thought upon him. This influence is there, very clearly visible, but Sri Aurobindo... has not allowed himself to be dominated by it. He has made full use of Western thought, but he has made use of it for the purpose of building up his own system..."[95] Thus Maitra, like Steve Odin,[96] sees Sri Aurobindo not only in the tradition and context of Indian, but also Western philosophy and assumes he may have adopted some elements from the latter for his synthesis.

In his writings, talks, and letters Sri Aurobindo has referred to several European philosophers with whose basic concepts he was familiar, commenting on their ideas and discussing the question of affinity to his own line of thought. Thus, he wrote a long essay on the Greek philosopher Heraclitus[74] and mentioned especially Plato, Plotinus, Nietzsche and Bergson as thinkers in whom he was interested because of their more intuitive approach.[75] On the other hand, he felt little attraction for the philosophy of Kant or Hegel.[76] Several studies[77] have shown a remarkable closeness to the evolutionary thought of Teilhard de Chardin, whom he did not know, whereas the latter came to know of Sri Aurobindo at a late stage. After reading some chapters of The Life Divine, he is reported to have said that Sri Aurobindo's vision of evolution was basically the same as his own, though stated for Asian readers.[78][79]

Several scholars have discovered significant similarities in the thought of Sri Aurobindo and Hegel. Steve Odin has discussed this subject comprehensively in a comparative study.[80] Odin writes that Sri Aurobindo "has appropriated Hegel’s notion of an Absolute Spirit and employed it to radically restructure the architectonic framework of the ancient Hindu Vedanta system in contemporary terms."[81] In his analysis Odin arrives at the conclusion that "both philosophers similarly envision world creation as the progressive self-manifestation and evolutionary ascent of a universal consciousness in its journey toward Self-realization."[82] He points out that in contrast to the deterministic and continuous dialectal unfolding of Absolute Reason by the mechanism of thesis-antithesis-synthesis or affirmation-negation-integration, "Sri Aurobindo argues for a creative, emergent mode of evolution."[82] In his résumé Odin states that Sri Aurobindo has overcome the ahistorical world-vision of traditional Hinduism and presented a concept which allows for a genuine advance and novelty.[83]

The American philosopher Ken Wilber has called Sri Aurobindo "India's greatest modern philosopher sage"[116] and has integrated some of his ideas into his philosophical vision. Wilber's interpretation of Aurobindo has been criticised by Rod Hemsell.[117] New Age writer Andrew Harvey also looks to Sri Aurobindo as a major inspiration.[118]

Arya

(Pondicherry 1910–1950)

In Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo dedicated himself to his spiritual and philosophical pursuits. In 1914, after four years of secluded yoga, he started a monthly philosophical magazine called Arya. (This ceased publication in 1921. Many years later, he revised some of these works before they were published in book form. Some of the book series derived from this publication were The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on The Gita, The Secret of The Veda, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, The Upanishads, The Renaissance in India, War and Self-determination, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity and The Future Poetry were published in this magazine.)

Although it is unknown who was responsible for the choice of Arya as the title of the journal, Sri Aurobindo explained what he understood the term to represent. In the second issue (September 1914), he composed an article entitled Arya: Its Significance in which he set forth the meaning of the term as he intended it. He wrote:

Intrinsically, in its most fundamental sense, arya means an effort or an uprising and overcoming. The Aryan is he who strives and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance. Self-conquest is the first law of his nature. He overcomes earth and the body and does not consent like ordinary men to their dullness, inertia, dead routine and tamasic limitations. He overcomes life and its energies and refuses to be dominated by their hungers and cravings or enslaved by their rajasic passions. He overcomes the mind and its habits, he does not live in a shell of ignorance, inherited prejudices, customary ideas, pleasant opinions, but knows how to seek and choose, to be large and flexible in intelligence even as he is firm and strong in his will. For in everything he seeks truth, in everything right, in everything height and freedom.[3]

Program and organization:

The Arya was advertised as "a review of pure philosophy"[4] with a twofold object:

1. A systematic study of the highest problems of existence.
2. The formation of a synthesis of knowledge, harmonizing the diverse religious traditions of humanity, occidental as well as oriental.

The method of the review was described as one of "realism, at once rational and transcendental; a realism consisting in the unification of intellectual and scientific discipline with those of intuitive experimentation."[4]

The material appearing in the Arya was organized under four main headings:

1. Synthetic studies in speculative philosophy.
2. Translations and commentaries of ancient texts.
3. Studies in comparative Religion.
4. Practical methods of inner culture and self-development.

[4]

Research synthesis or evidence synthesis is the process of combining the results of multiple primary research studies aimed at testing the same conceptual hypothesis. It may be applied to either quantitative[1] or qualitative research.[2] Its general goals are to make the findings from multiple different studies more generalizable and applicable.[3] It aims to generate new knowledge by combining and comparing the results of multiple studies on a given topic.[1]

In qualitative research, methods of synthesis include narrative synthesis and meta-ethnography. Narrative synthesis allows researchers to address a wide range of questions in their review, while meta-ethnography aims to preserve the cultural context in which the original findings of the included studies were generated.[2][4][5] The narrative synthesis approach has attracted criticism because of its potential for bias, with critics highlighting the subjective nature of the use of the method to draw conclusions. There is also evidence that reviews using the narrative synthesis approach often suffer from a lack of transparency.[6]